Gender Roles In Mi-Ja

Poetry is a film that tells the story of Mi-Ja, an elderly Korean woman who becomes interested in writing poetry as a way to stave off the encroaching threat of Alzheimer’s disease, all while she tries to take care of her spoiled and delinquent grandson. The film also has an important subplot that revolves around Agnes, a young girl who kills herself after suffering months of sexual assault from a group of classmates, one of which who happens to be Mi-Ja’s grandson. In this essay, I will argue that this film, through exploring the intersecting lives of Mi-Ja and Agnes, critiques the state of gender relations in modern day South Korea, and how life in a Patriarchal society causes great harm to women, and doesn’t allow them to thrive creatively. Throughout the movie, it’s made clear the South Korea is a society where the needs of men are placed far above that of women. Before …show more content…
Hunt argues that maintaining this hierarchy is incredibly important to those in power, because not only does it allow them to maintain that power, but it also excludes women from achieving that same level of power, which keeps them subordinate to men who are in the dominant position in society (Hunt, 165). When we separate men and women into dominant and subordinate positions, it makes sense that those in power would want to perpetuate that inequality so that they can stay in power for as long as possible, and to do this they need to cultivate certain characteristics in the oppressed so they more easily accept their submissive role. J.B. Miller writes extensively on the relationship between dominant and subordinate groups, and I think that we can see examples of this dynamic present in the film Poetry, especially with how female characters like Mi-Ja and Agnes relate to the men in their